Think Outside the Cage

Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition

Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Finally after two decades prisoners will be allowed to take college classes. More information will be available on Friday when the official announcement comes from the White House Wall Street Journal

By

Josh Mitchell and

Joe Palazzolo

Updated July 27, 2015 7:32 p.m. ET

The Obama
administration plans to restore federal funding for prison inmates to
take college courses, a potentially controversial move that comes amid a
broader push to overhaul the criminal justice system.
The plan,
set to be unveiled Friday by the secretary of education and the attorney
general, would allow potentially thousands of inmates in the U.S. to
gain access to Pell grants, the main form of federal aid for low-income
college students. The grants cover up to $5,775 a year in tuition, fees,
books and other education-related expenses.
Prisoners received
$34 million in Pell grants in 1993, according to figures the Department
of Education provided to Congress at the time. But a year later,
Congress prohibited state and federal prison inmates from getting Pell
grants as part of broad anticrime legislation, leading to a sharp drop
in the number of in-prison college programs. Supporters of the ban
contended federal aid should only go to law-abiding citizens.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

EL RENO, Okla. — They opened the door to Cell 123 and President Obama
stared inside. In the space of 9 feet by 10, he saw three bunks, a
toilet with no seat, a small sink, metal cabinets, a little wooden night
table with a dictionary and other books, and the life he might have
had.

As
it turns out, there is a fine line between president and prisoner. As
Mr. Obama became the first occupant of his high office to visit a
federal correctional facility, he said he could not help reflecting on
what might have been. After all, as a young man, he had smoked marijuana
and tried cocaine. But he did not end up with a prison term, let alone
one lasting decades.

“There but for the grace of God,” Mr. Obama said after his tour. “And that is something we all have to think about.”

Close to one in every 12 black men ages 25 to 54 are imprisoned, compared with one in 60 nonblack men in that age group.

Mr.
Obama came here to showcase a bid to overhaul America’s criminal
justice system in a way none of his predecessors have tried to do, at
least not in modern times. Where other presidents worked to make life
harder for criminals, Mr. Obama wants to make their conditions better.

With
18 months left in office, he has embarked on a new effort to reduce
sentences for nonviolent offenders; to make it easier for former
convicts to re-enter society; and to revamp prison life by easing
overcrowding, cracking down on inmate rape and limiting solitary
confinement.

What
was once politically unthinkable has become a bipartisan venture. Mr.
Obama is making common cause with Republicans and Democrats who have
come to the conclusion that the United States has given excessive
sentences to too many nonviolent offenders, at an enormous moral and
financial cost to the country. This week, Mr. Obama commuted the sentences of 46 such prisoners and gave a speech calling for legislation to overhaul the criminal justice system by the end of the year.

He
came to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution on Thursday to get
a firsthand look at what he is focused on. Accompanied by aides,
correctional officials and a phalanx of Secret Service agents, he
crossed through multiple layers of metal gates and fences topped by
concertina wire to tour the prison and talk with some of the nonviolent
drug offenders he says should not be serving such long sentences.

The
prison was locked down for his visit. He was brought to Cell Block B,
which had been emptied for the occasion. Only security personnel were
outside on the carefully trimmed grass yards. The only inmates Mr. Obama
saw were six nonviolent drug offenders who were selected to have a
conversation with him recorded by the news organization Vice for a
documentary on the criminal justice system that will air on HBO in the
fall.

But
those six made an impression. “When they describe their youth and their
childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that
different from the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you
guys made,” Mr. Obama told reporters afterward. “The difference is, they
did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the
resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”

He
added that “we have a tendency sometimes to take for granted or think
it’s normal” that so many young people have been locked up for drug
crimes. “It’s not normal,” he said. “It’s not what happens in other
countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is
normal is young people who make mistakes.”

If they had the same advantages he and others have had, Mr. Obama added, they “could be thriving in the way we are.”

Still,
he made a distinction between nonviolent drug offenders like those he
was introduced to here and other criminals guilty of crimes like murder,
rape and assault. “There are people who need to be in prison,” Mr.
Obama said. “I don’t have tolerance for violent criminals; many of them
may have made mistakes, but we need to keep our communities safe.”

More
than 2.2 million Americans are behind bars, and one study found that
the size of the state and federal prison population is seven times what
it was 40 years ago. Although the United States makes up less than 5
percent of the world’s population, it has more than 20 percent of its
prison population

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

In the United
States, low-income and foster-care kids are prescribed psychotropic
drugs at an alarmingly higher rate than their peers in America or
abroad. Governingrecently wrote about the
problem and what states are doing to deal with it in March. But since
then, California began closing in on a package of bills that could make
the state a leader in controlling overmedication.

Earlier this month, the California state Senate unanimously passed
four bills that would strengthen the state’s monitoring system for
foster kids' prescriptions, require stronger evidence documenting the
need for medications, add more medical expertise in the area of
oversight and force group homes that overprescribe to develop plans to
change their practices. Some of those ideas aren't new, but experts say
adopting all of them together could make California a model.

"We feel pretty confident that this package of four bills is really
more comprehensive and targets so many different aspects of the problem
that other states really have not been targeting,” said Bill Grimm of
the National Center for Youth Law, the group behind the legislation.

Psychotropic drugs range from amphetamines, which are often
prescribed for ADHD, to antidepressants and antipsychotics.
Antipsychotics were originally intended for the treatment of severe
mental health illnesses but have increasingly been prescribed to
children with behavior issues since the 1990s. Numerous studies show
low-income children, particularly those in foster care, are prescribed
psychotropic drugs at rates far above privately insured kids. The Office of Inspector General has raised alarms
in numerous reports. Since 2011, federal authorities have required
states to report annually about steps they’re taking to curb
psychotropic prescriptions.

California is one of only a few states that requires a judge to
approve prescriptions for psychotropic drugs, but according to an investigative newspaper series, it still prescribed them to about a quarter of foster kids (compared to just 4.8 percent
of privately insured children), over the past decade. The bills would
revamp the court system of prior approval. The form that doctors submit
to judges, for instance, would have to show that doctors tried other
therapeutic services first. Judges would also have the power to request a
second opinion or return the form for more information, and doctors
would have to get the written consent of children 14 and older. The bill
also offers training to everyone from judges to group-home employees on
the appropriate uses of these drugs and expands data-sharing between
the Medicaid system that pays for care and the child welfare system.

The two most notable changes, though, are increased monitoring of
group homes and expanded use of nurses -- both of which are uncommon.
The newspaper series highlighted links between group homes for foster
kids and high rates of prescription medications, which children often
had to take as a condition of staying there. With better data-sharing,
state officials would flag group homes with the highest rates of
psychotropic prescribing and require them to make plans to reduce
overmedication. Nurses, meanwhile, would monitor the side effects of
antipsychotics such as serious weight gain, diabetes and neurological
disorders.

The bills haven’t encountered opposition, but they still need to pass
the California Assembly and get the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown who's
been fairly quiet on the issue even though it generated a lot of
interest after the newspaper investigation. The bills come at an
estimated cost of $5 million in the first year, with about $4 million
thereafter. To Anna Johnson, a policy analyst with the National Center
for Youth Law, Brown's reputation as a budget hawk means he's less
likely to support the bill package.
“His main legacy here has been that he’s had this balanced budget,
but for foster kids [for] whom every day feels like a rainy day, we feel
like he could do more to protect them,” she said.
When asked for his opinion on the package of bills, his press office
said Brown doesn’t typically comment on pending legislation.

Shadi Houshyar, vice president of child welfare policy at the
advocacy group First Focus, agrees that the bills would be a positive
step, but she also thinks states are generally behind on an element
that’s critical to actually replace drugs: access to services like
intensive counseling and individualized case management.
“The biggest challenge is how you increase the use of evidence-based
therapies for kids in addition to the monitoring strategies,” she said.

The way to do that, according to Houshyar, is to offer those services
through Medicaid, which allows states to leverage federal funding, and
make them accessible through child welfare departments. Some notable
examples of places that do that are Arizona -- which has a Medicaid plan
specifically for foster children -- Michigan and New Jersey.

For California, the money is there, said Grimm. Since 2004, the state
has raised $13 billion for mental health services from a ballot measure
that raised taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year. But an
independent state oversight agency found
recently that much of the spending is unaccountable and poorly
prioritized, with little sense of exactly how the money is being spent
and what it’s producing. Grimm’s group wants to ensure that money is
going to children in the foster-care system.

“There is a considerable amount of money and resources out there,”
he said. “The question is to what extent is that money being used for
children?”

On Sunday, bleary after an overnight flight from
New York, a group of American criminal justice professionals squeezed
into a private room in a downtown Berlin restaurant. They were preparing
to visit German prisons and meet German prison officials. The trip,
organized by the Vera Institute, a think tank based in New York, is all
about studying another system so that we might better understand our
own.

From the brief introductions, it was clear that
this trip would be as much about the United States as about Europe.
Germany’s system of sentencing (15 years is the longest most people go
to prison here unless they are demonstrably dangerous) and incarceration
(open, sunny prisons, full of fresh air, where prisoners wear their own
clothes) serves as a reference point for reflecting on the punitive
mentality that has come to define the U.S. justice system.

In Germany, then, we would see ourselves—but through a looking glass.

The American travelers—corrections officials,
district attorneys, academics, and activists—represent the variety of
perspectives that fall under what journalists have taken to calling the “emerging consensus”
on criminal justice reform. There are the guys who run prisons and
worry about recidivism numbers. There are elected district attorneys
wondering how the public responds to such short sentences. And then
there are reform activists determined to see prisoners treated humanely.

One year ago -- on June 10, 2014 -- Kevin Monteiro was released after nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder.
That day, Monteiro was dropped off by a prison van at the Greyhound
bus station in downtown Denver with a prison-issued debit card, and says
he felt completely lost.
“I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," remembers Monteiro. "No family, nobody.”

Now, a year after his first day of freedom, Monteiro told
Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner that he's built a life for himself. He
has a steady job, his own apartment, and he's reconnecting with
relatives. Putting all of that together wasn't easy though.

“Prison is a funny thing. At first when you go in you hate
it. There’s a stage you go through. Then you come to accept it. Then you
come to depend on it," he said.

Breaking out of the routine took a lot of time, effort and
luck, Monteiro said. It was bad enough that at one point he actually
wanted to go back to prison. But those days are now passed, he said.

“I don’t miss prison. There’s times I miss some of the
people I left behind in prison," he said. "There are some good people
inside and they are worth saving.”

Click the audio player above to hear the full conversation, and read highlights below.

- See more at:
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/after-year-freedom-parolee-kevin-monteiro-still-carries-weight-his-past#sthash.E0Wrllja.KYvhthiF.dpuf

One year ago -- on June 10, 2014 -- Kevin Monteiro was released after nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder.
That day, Monteiro was dropped off by a prison van at the Greyhound
bus station in downtown Denver with a prison-issued debit card, and says
he felt completely lost.
“I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," remembers Monteiro. "No family, nobody.”

Now, a year after his first day of freedom, Monteiro told
Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner that he's built a life for himself. He
has a steady job, his own apartment, and he's reconnecting with
relatives. Putting all of that together wasn't easy though.

“Prison is a funny thing. At first when you go in you hate
it. There’s a stage you go through. Then you come to accept it. Then you
come to depend on it," he said.

Breaking out of the routine took a lot of time, effort and
luck, Monteiro said. It was bad enough that at one point he actually
wanted to go back to prison. But those days are now passed, he said.

“I don’t miss prison. There’s times I miss some of the
people I left behind in prison," he said. "There are some good people
inside and they are worth saving.”

Click the audio player above to hear the full conversation, and read highlights below.

On the difference between what he planned and what's happened
"My plans were totally different. What I planned ... is totally
different to what’s happening in my life now. There’s a big difference
when you have friends. Coming out of prison with no family, with no one
that really cares is one thing. But when you come out and people care
about you and people give you a chance, that’s really amazing.”On having a weak immune system after decades inside
“Because I did so much time, and a lot of my time was in isolation,
so when I did come out of prison, I noticed that I catch colds a lot.
This last cold I had, I actually went to the hospital and they actually
had to give me a steroid and antibiotics. But when [a nurse] took the
blood and did an examination on me, she said your immune system is very
weak and very low. So I kind of drag colds along with me.”On giving advice to fellow parolees
“What an ex-offender or parolee has to do is, number one, be very
honest with themselves. And always remember that the number one thing in
an offender’s life is his victim. Always remember your victim. Don’t
ever separate that. I took a life. ... [T]hat’s something I can never
fix. So that victim is always in my mind.”
- See more at:
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/after-year-freedom-parolee-kevin-monteiro-still-carries-weight-his-past#sthash.E0Wrllja.KYvhthiF.dpuf

One year ago -- on June 10, 2014 -- Kevin Monteiro was released after nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder.
That day, Monteiro was dropped off by a prison van at the Greyhound
bus station in downtown Denver with a prison-issued debit card, and says
he felt completely lost.
“I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," remembers Monteiro. "No family, nobody.”

Now, a year after his first day of freedom, Monteiro told
Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner that he's built a life for himself. He
has a steady job, his own apartment, and he's reconnecting with
relatives. Putting all of that together wasn't easy though.

“Prison is a funny thing. At first when you go in you hate
it. There’s a stage you go through. Then you come to accept it. Then you
come to depend on it," he said.

Breaking out of the routine took a lot of time, effort and
luck, Monteiro said. It was bad enough that at one point he actually
wanted to go back to prison. But those days are now passed, he said.

“I don’t miss prison. There’s times I miss some of the
people I left behind in prison," he said. "There are some good people
inside and they are worth saving.”

Click the audio player above to hear the full conversation, and read highlights below.

On the difference between what he planned and what's happened
"My plans were totally different. What I planned ... is totally
different to what’s happening in my life now. There’s a big difference
when you have friends. Coming out of prison with no family, with no one
that really cares is one thing. But when you come out and people care
about you and people give you a chance, that’s really amazing.”On having a weak immune system after decades inside
“Because I did so much time, and a lot of my time was in isolation,
so when I did come out of prison, I noticed that I catch colds a lot.
This last cold I had, I actually went to the hospital and they actually
had to give me a steroid and antibiotics. But when [a nurse] took the
blood and did an examination on me, she said your immune system is very
weak and very low. So I kind of drag colds along with me.”On giving advice to fellow parolees
“What an ex-offender or parolee has to do is, number one, be very
honest with themselves. And always remember that the number one thing in
an offender’s life is his victim. Always remember your victim. Don’t
ever separate that. I took a life. ... [T]hat’s something I can never
fix. So that victim is always in my mind.”
- See more at:
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/after-year-freedom-parolee-kevin-monteiro-still-carries-weight-his-past#sthash.E0Wrllja.KYvhthiF.dpuf

One year ago -- on June 10, 2014 -- Kevin Monteiro was released after nearly 30 years in prison for second-degree murder.
That day, Monteiro was dropped off by a prison van at the Greyhound
bus station in downtown Denver with a prison-issued debit card, and says
he felt completely lost.
“I had a hundred dollars in my pocket and a box of books," remembers Monteiro. "No family, nobody.”

Now, a year after his first day of freedom, Monteiro told
Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner that he's built a life for himself. He
has a steady job, his own apartment, and he's reconnecting with
relatives. Putting all of that together wasn't easy though.

“Prison is a funny thing. At first when you go in you hate
it. There’s a stage you go through. Then you come to accept it. Then you
come to depend on it," he said.

Breaking out of the routine took a lot of time, effort and
luck, Monteiro said. It was bad enough that at one point he actually
wanted to go back to prison. But those days are now passed, he said.

“I don’t miss prison. There’s times I miss some of the
people I left behind in prison," he said. "There are some good people
inside and they are worth saving.”

Click the audio player above to hear the full conversation, and read highlights below.

On the difference between what he planned and what's happened
"My plans were totally different. What I planned ... is totally
different to what’s happening in my life now. There’s a big difference
when you have friends. Coming out of prison with no family, with no one
that really cares is one thing. But when you come out and people care
about you and people give you a chance, that’s really amazing.”On having a weak immune system after decades inside
“Because I did so much time, and a lot of my time was in isolation,
so when I did come out of prison, I noticed that I catch colds a lot.
This last cold I had, I actually went to the hospital and they actually
had to give me a steroid and antibiotics. But when [a nurse] took the
blood and did an examination on me, she said your immune system is very
weak and very low. So I kind of drag colds along with me.”On giving advice to fellow parolees
“What an ex-offender or parolee has to do is, number one, be very
honest with themselves. And always remember that the number one thing in
an offender’s life is his victim. Always remember your victim. Don’t
ever separate that. I took a life. ... [T]hat’s something I can never
fix. So that victim is always in my mind.”
- See more at:
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/after-year-freedom-parolee-kevin-monteiro-still-carries-weight-his-past#sthash.E0Wrllja.KYvhthiF.dpuf

NPR
The thing Sara Garcia remembers from the day her son, Mark, got out
of prison was the hug — the very, very awkward hug. He had just turned
21 and for the past two and a half years, he'd been in solitary
confinement.

"He's not used to anyone touching him," Garcia
says. "So he's not used to hugs. And I mean we grabbed him. I mean, we
hugged him. We held him. I mean, it was just surreal to just know I can
finally give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek."

Mark, who was released directly from solitary confinement into his mother's arms, is one of tens of thousands of inmates that NPR and The Marshall Project
— a journalism group that focuses on the criminal justice system —
found as part of a state-by-state survey. We wanted to know: How many
people are released directly from solitary confinement to the streets?

There were at least 10,000 in 2014. That's from information
provided by just 24 states. The other 26 states — as well as the federal
prison system — say they don't count, or couldn't provide, numbers.
Often,
inmates in solitary confinement serve all or most of their sentence. So
when they are released, they don't get parole services to help with
re-entry that's offered to most ex-prisoners.

Mental health
experts and researchers say that long stays in solitary confinement
often emotionally damage people, both teens and adults, and can create
lifelong mental illness. When those prisoners come home, they often
struggle to get along with people, including the family members they
depend upon most.

Prison officials say they need solitary
confinement to control the most violent prisoners. In Texas, for
example, it's used often to break up prison gangs.

Garcia's son
went to a Texas prison for robbing a store with a gun. At the time, he
was 14. She says that her son was manipulated by some older men;
prosecutors say he acted alone.

Just days after he turned 18,
Mark was moved to an adult prison. When his mother came to visit, he
told her that he was afraid of the older inmates.

More From This Investigation

This story was reported in partnership between NPR News Investigations and The Marshall Project,
a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice
system. Continue reading this investigation on The Marshall Project's
website: From Solitary To The Street. You can read the first part of the NPR report here.

NPR
In prison, Brian Nelson lived in solitary confinement. That meant 23
hours a day in a small cell. No human contact, except with guards — for
12 years straight.

Then, his prison sentence for murder was over. One moment he was locked down. The next, he was free.
NPR
and The Marshall Project, an online journalism group that focuses on
the criminal justice system, investigated the release of tens of
thousands of prisoners from solitary confinement to find out how many
prisoners, like Nelson, go straight from solitary to the streets.

What was stunning is that most prison systems say they have no idea.The Marshall Project and NPR surveyed
all 50 states. About half reported they don't keep track or could not
provide numbers of which inmates go straight home from solitary. And a
recent audit for the federal Bureau of Prisons said it doesn't keep
numbers, either.

But our tally from the 24 states that say they
count shows that last year, at least 10,000 inmates came straight out
of solitary.

Yet inmates released from solitary often need the most help — and get the least.

In
solitary, they're cut off from things that help with re-entry. There
are no education classes, no job training; and when they are released,
they often get less supervision than other prisoners.
When
Nelson's mother picked him up at the distant supermax prison in Tamms,
Ill., he told her how he was given a television during his last year of
solitary and kept seeing ads for a fast-food ice cream.
"And I
kept seeing a Blizzard. I kept seeing these Blizzards. And I'm like,
'God that looks so good.' So all I wanted was a Blizzard," he says.

On the drive home, they stopped for a Blizzard at a Dairy Queen.

"And
I'm standing there and a guy walked behind me. And I was not used to
people being that close to me. And I started cussing. I turned around,
I'm ready to fight because I thought I don't know if he's going to
attack me," Nelson recalls. "I have prison mentality in my mind. And
then I looked up and saw my mom crying, like 'Oh my God, what have they
done to him?' You know, because I couldn't handle being around people."

That was five years ago. It's still hard for Nelson, 50, to be around people.

About This InvestigationThis story was reported in partnership between NPR News Investigations and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice system.Read more of this investigation from The Marshall Project: From Solitary To The Street.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

A planned medical
clinic serving recovering drug addicts on East Colfax Avenue has upset
some nearby residents, who are angry about, among other things, the
proximity to Denver East High School.
The Denver Recovery Group,
2822 E. Colfax Ave., is under construction and could open sometime next
month, but residents who live nearby and who have students attending
East High School are worried about their children walking past the
clinic, the possibility of increased crime, loitering and decreased
property values.

"Having that activity doesn't strike me as a good idea," resident Alison Laevey said.
Residents
will be able to get more information, ask questions and voice concerns
at a meeting at 6:30 p.m. April 21 at East High School.

The Denver
Recovery Group is a startup medical clinic that will provide medication
and assistance to recovering addicts of heroin, painkillers and other
drugs. One of the common treatment drugs is methadone, a synthetic
opioid that helps patients kick heroin and morphine addictions.
Methadone is not the only drug dispensed at the clinic.

The same owners also have a clinic in Las Cruces, N.M. called Alt Recovery Center.
Despite
concerns, Denver Recovery Group partner Chad Tewksbury said the need is
present in the area and he believes there is a misconception about the
clientele.

"It's more dangerous to walk past the addicts already
on Colfax," Tewksbury said. "No one is forced to come here. They're
coming voluntarily."

Some
of the surrounding neighborhoods also voiced concerns last year when a
similar clinic moved to 1620 Gaylord St. from two blocks north. That
clinic is part of Addiction Research and Treatment Services run by the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Addiction
Research and Treatment Services executive director Tom Brewster said
things have run smoothly since the clinic moved in October. He added
that rather than increase crime, these facilities should help reduce
crime and help the growing number of drug addicts in Denver.
"This is really a problem; we're trying to address it," Brewster said. "We can hardly keep up."

Another
nearby clinic, the BHG Denver Downtown Treatment Center near 18th
Avenue and Josephine Street, is scheduled to move in the coming months,
leaving a void in the area.
Denver City Councilwoman Jeanne
Robb, who represents the area, said she has met with several residents
who are upset over the plans and her office is in the process of looking
into how this is handled in other areas of the state and across the
country.

"Unfortunately, right now we have no restrictions," Robb said. "It's classified as a medical clinic."
The zoning permit for the clinic was approved in January by the city and Tewksbury said he has a three-year lease.

Resident
Robert Mutch said he and his wife had put about $150,000 into
refurbishing his house, less than a block away from the clinic, but he's
now considering moving rather than doing more work.
"All of the neighbors are just livid about it," he said.

Tewksbury
said he chose this area because he collaborated with the State Opioid
Treatment Authority and identified this as a place that needs this type
of clinic. It's also on the bus route. He said he's already receiving
calls asking when the clinic will open so clients can transfer.
"I'm passionate about what we're doing," he said. Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joe_vaccCommunity meeting:
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Date: Tuesday, April 21
Where: Denver East High School, 1600 City Park Esplanade